How does employer status benefit firms in the market for general human capital? On the one hand, high status employers are better able to attract workers, who value the signal of ability that employment at those firms provides. On the other hand, that same signal can help workers bid up wages...

In 1990 Colombia replaced its traditional system of severance payments with a new system of severance payments savings accounts (SPSAs). Although severance payments often are justified on the grounds that they provide insurance against earnings loss, they also increase costs for employers and...

The study of labor flows across labor markets is a central ingredient in any discussion of labor market equilibrium. These labor flows help markets reach a more efficient allocation of resources. This paper surveys the economic analysis of immigration. It investigates the determinants of the...

To the layman, the upward trend in European unemployment is related to the slowdown in economic growth. We argue that the layman's view is correct. The increase in European unemployment and the slowdown in economic growth are related because they stem from a common cause: an excessively high...

Over long periods of human history, labor market equilibrium involved movements from low-wage areas to high-wage areas, a form of arbitrage under the implicit view that wage differentials corresponded to utility differentials. This “labor economics” view is likely to be viable as long as...

Austria is among the very few countries in the European Union which have managed to maintain comparatively low unemployment rates and high employment rates. In international comparison Austrian unemployment is very stable over the business cycle. This is mainly due to the high sensitivity of the...

Decomposing wages into worker and firm wage components, we find that firm-fixed components (firm rents) are sizeable parts of workers' wages. If workers can only imperfectly observe the extent of firm rents in their wages, they might be mislead about the overall wage distribution. Such...